May 24th, 2006 by
Keith

Yes, if you look carefully at the naming, I find it strange myself too. It is called 2007 Microsoft Office Systems Beta 2, with the year 2007 in front. However, with all due respect, Microsoft has announced publicly that the long awaiting beta version of Microsoft Office 2007 is available to be downloaded for trial.

Microsoft perceives 2007 Microsoft Office system to take over its predecessor, Microsoft Office 2003 early next year when it is rumoured to be launched publicly at the same time with Windows Vista, the next generation Windows operating system.

The move by Microsoft by allowing public to openly download 2007 Microsoft Office system, in fact provides the users first-hand experience with the new look and feel, features and functionalities of the latest 2007 Microsoft Office release.

If you have used Microsoft Office before, i.e. Office 2003, Office XP and even Office 2000, you might be in for a huge surprise to see the great change in this release. Microsoft has absolutely create a new makeover for the office suite, and for a start, users would be stunned at where are those commands to be found. For instance, in Microsoft Word, the drop-down bar at the top have disappeared, and replaced by bigger visual tabs. Despite the large change, it is worthwhile noticing that the basic functionality of the previous versions remain, however with more features included into the product.

Getting the Beta
If you cannot wait to finish reading this article before getting your hands onto the software, you might want to know that there are 2 ways of getting the preview release. You can either choose to order the DVD by mail, which will take a little bit of time, or download the setup files over the internet.

Note, there are 13 different products from the 2007 Microsoft Office System Beta 2, to be downloaded. Users are allowed to select those that they want. Alternatively, the DVD should also include these products as well.

If you choose to order by mail, you may have to pay for shipping and handling charges. The DVD demand will have limited offer, while supplies last. Click here to access the site to order your DVD.

Unfortunately, Microsoft do not support BitTorrent, so there isn’t a need for sharing bandwidth to download the software. However, the download for the files over the internet isn’t that slow. If you have a high bandwidth broadband connection, it shouldn’t take a couple of minutes to download the entire collection of 2.5GB of set up files. Click here to access the download site.

More about downloading: Users will enter the secured site where personal information will have be filled in. Do note that users are required to fill in those information and particulars, in order to gain access to download those setup files. Skipping that section will render failure in obtaining your download source.

2007 Microsoft Office system Beta 2 is a public preview release designed to help users evaluate the Microsoft Office system. Do note that the beta is not final version and users are advised not be used for business-critical work.

Expiration Date
Since nothing is going to be free. This beta preview will cease to work by February 1, 2007. After expiration, 2007 Microsoft Office system Beta 2 will continue to work in a reduced functionality mode that limits your options and operations.

Additional comments
Personally, I do feel that Microsoft has come from far to create this impressive piece of software, with lots of focus and emphasis placed on the User Interface capability. So much for the giant software developer with the good thing, now the bad thing. In some way or another, the resource requirement of running Microsoft Office applications is far more demanding than the previous versions. Notably, the startup takes longer time, at least twice as long, than I have when running Office 2003.

In addition, Microsoft has come up with new file formats, i.e. Word documents will have .docx instead of .doc. A move, I feel, is to have a tighter stronghold on the Office application market, knowing that other open source Office applications, such as OpenOffice.org is becoming more widespread, and available freely for download. One of the main reasons which Microsoft has gone public with Beta preview release, is to attract customers back to use its own products.

Nonetheless, this is still in the development stage, let’s see by next year January, if the final version of 2007 Microsoft Office System going to be public annouced and released.